'Interactive' Grammys Reach Most Viewers in 6 Years

Share

'Interactive' Grammys Reach Most Viewers in 6 Years

The music industry is flailing and the mainstream running dry, according conventional wisdom, but this year's Grammy Awards — arguably most mainstream event in the world — was a surprise hit. Over 56 million viewers tuned in this year, which represents 35 percent more than last year and the broadcast's highest Neilsen rating since '04 (the year of Outkast).

It's no coincidence that in addition to being popular, this year's Grammys were also the most interactive. People have certainly found a lot not to like about the production, as usual, so the ratings bump likely wasn't due entirely to the show itself, but rather to its feature set.

The biggest innovation this year was a crowdsourcing feature for mass song requests that allowed fans to decide which songs Bon Jovi should play. Then there's We Are All Fans, a graphically intensive website that shows user uploaded video and social network messages discussing each Grammy nominee and includes a 3-D representation of how much each nominee is being discussed on Twitter in real-time.

Meanwhile, CBS's Grammys interactive radio station featured some of the usual suspects (The Black Eyed Peas, Green Day, Lady Gaga, Pink, Taylor Swift, the Zac Brown Band, Beyoncé and Bon Jovi), and event staff kept fans in the loop via Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Afterwards, they posted photo galleries, red carpet photos, backstage interviews, highlights chopped into little clips for easy linking from social networks, and even an online account of what CBS's censors removed, potentially increasing next year's audience by keeping fans thinking about this year's event for a bit longer.